


Sam Spade Had It Easy

by meh_guh



Category: Half Moon Investigations
Genre: Grown Up, M/M, snarky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-14
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-07 17:18:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meh_guh/pseuds/meh_guh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having grown up and started their very own proper detective agency together, Fletcher and Red live practically in each other's pockets anyway. When a case takes them to Limerick looking for (yawn) evidence of infidelity, Fletcher starts to worry that his growing feelings for his partner might just ruin everything.<br/>Red thinks Fletcher's over thinking everything again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Noir is Just Another Term for Nothing Left to Gain

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo... anyone who's familiar with Adare ought to feel free to spam me with corrections/suggestions/email slappings since I'm relying entirely on Google for my information. If I get something egregiously wrong, I'll fix it (assumming there's anyone out there actually reading in Half Moon ^_^)

I know how these stories are supposed to start: I’d be in my office, half an hour into the day and halfway through a bottle of malt. My no-good, womanising partner would be draped over the secretary like lecherous, overcooked pasta, and _she_ would walk in. Five feet four of trouble in Chinese silks and French perfume. Legs all the way down to the ground and a pout that knew exactly when to quit. I’d give her a cynical once-over as she posed against the doorframe, and before I knew it, I’d be eyebrows deep in danger, sexual intrigue and betrayal.

The trouble with real life as a PI, though, is that real life doesn’t respect narrative conventions.

This story does start with me half an hour into the day, halfway through a bottle, but the bottle was chocolate milk. Red Sharkey (the very good, but still womanising partner) was draped over his own chair since our needs and budget didn’t actually stretch to a secretary. He was murmuring extremely improper things into the phone, presumably talking to one of his four hundred girlfriends. It’s a miracle he hasn’t been slapped with either a sexual harassment or paternity suit. There’s a chunk of the aforementioned budged quietly set aside to cover that eventuality.

I did my best not to listen, but being a professional snoop makes some things hard. Red noticed me trying not to notice, grinned, and raised his voice a little.

I was saved from flaming-cheeked embarrassment by the arrival of a new client.

 _He_ was six foot flat of bland in off-the-rack grey wool and eau de actuary; legs that presumably went to the ground (though enthusiasm on that count was hard to muster) and a furrow between his eyebrows.

I threw my milk hurriedly into the waste bin and shuffled around my desk to offer my hand and the rickety chair we’d set out for clients.

He took my hand briefly, but waved the chair away.

‘Mister Moon?’ The dubious tone was an old, unwelcome friend.

‘At your disposal,’ I ignored Red’s quiet snigger. So what if I’m a little baby faced? I’m only a year younger than he is, and I’ve finally matched his height.

‘My name’s O’Reilly,’ the client said, handing over a business card. Chartered Accountant, to my complete lack of surprise.

Since he remained standing, I leaned against my desk, idly tapping his business card against my chin. ‘How can I help you, Mr O’Reilly?’

‘I think my wife is cheating on me,’ he said. ‘I want to know for sure.’

It’s stupid to feel disappointed in a paying case; divorce peripherals are a PI’s bread and butter, but there’s just something disheartening seeing the regularity with which couples screw each other over.

‘What makes you think she’s going behind your back?’ It’s always best to sort the paranoids from the legitimates at the beginning. Saves on the glazier and trips to A&E, I find.

‘She’s been going out of town for the last ten weekends,’ O’Reilly replied, then a faint blush stained his cheeks. The colour made him instantly ten times as handsome, but that was neither here nor there. ‘And coming home… happy.’

Red, having put the phone down sometime during the introductions, leaned back in his chair, balancing on two legs. ‘"Happy", Mr O’Reilly?’

O’Reilly turned to glance at Red and nodded. ‘Happy like I haven’t seen her in five years. There have also been new dresses which she hasn’t worn for me, and secretive phone calls in the evenings.’

I looked at Red, and we had a brief, silent conversation of twitchy eyebrows and mouths. We didn’t have any cases at the moment, and we could either of us do this in our sleep.

‘All right, Mr O’Reilly,’ I said, turning away from Red. ‘We’ll need a photo of your wife, and her schedule if you have it. Oh, and for philandering cases, I’m afraid the company policy is to take the money upfront.’

O’Reilly nodded. ‘How much?’

I named a price, factoring in expenses.

O’Reilly frowned. ‘Does that price get both of you on the case?’

I opened my mouth to reply, thinking about Red’s hectic social schedule, but he beat me to it.

‘Sure,’ Red said casually. ‘If you want.’

O’Reilly nodded again, pulling out a chequebook. ‘She’s going to Adare this weekend. I’ll email you the photo and further details.’

He signed, crossed and tore a cheque. I set it on my desk, straightened and offered my hand again.

‘We’ll have something for you by Monday.’

O’Reilly shook my hand, nodded at Red and departed. Once the door closed, I sat down behind my laptop and looked over at Red.

‘Hot date get cancelled?’

He grinned his crooked, charming grin and leaned back, hands folded behind his head. ‘Maybe I just want to spend a romantic weekend with you, Half Moon.’

When I didn’t dignify that with a response, he shrugged and continued. ‘It’s a nice area, and I wasn’t doing anything urgent.’

‘So you volunteered to come as backup on a case we could either of us do blindfolded.’

Red just grinned and closed his eyes.


	2. Hard Boiled Like a Twenty-Minute Egg

'I don't want to know where the car came from, do I?' I frowned at the shiny black thing taking up one and a half spaces of street parking.

Red slid his sunglasses down his nose and peered at me. 'Da had a-'

'Nope,' I hurled my duffle into the back seat so my fingers were free to stuff into my ears. 'I don't want to know. I wish to maintain my plausible deniability on this one front, give me that if you would?'

Red's eyes rolled hard enough to risk muscle strain, but he shut up. I grinned at him, and settled into the passenger seat, letting my eyes slide shut.

O'Reilly had sent through a veritable wiki worth of data, and I'd been up all night trying to sift through it. Great on the guy for attempts at helpful, but the overshare was just as problematic as the reticence clients usually felt. 

'I think he sent me her entire history,' I groaned, as Red started the engine. 'Seriously, he scanned her _birthday cards_.'

'Aww,' Red ruffled my hair before I could bat his hand away. 'I thought you liked the whole creepy stalker aspect of detective work; knowing everything about someone.'

I threw a blind punch towards his arm, not bothering to open my eyes. 'I'm going to sleep. Wake me when we get there.'

I burrowed down under my coat, and for a moment just before I drifted off I thought I felt Red's hand on the back of my neck, a soothing caress.

Couldn't be, though. I slept.

****

I woke groggily, blinking as Red shook my shoulder. 'Msrmphggls?'

Yep, coherent and classy: that's me.

Red's eyes danced with barely suppressed laughter, and he sat back. 'You want lunch, princess?'

I looked out the window to see an Eddie Rocket's. I sighed. Red does these things just to torture me.

I was just about hungry enough to eat one of their ridiculous faux-nostalgic Americana meals, though, so I just unbuckled and stomped to the door.

****

We reached Adare just shy of nine that night, which OK we should've left earlier, but part of the fantastic joy of adulthood is the ability to make incredibly poor decisions on your _own_.

I'd checked out all three of the village's hotels (blow me away, you big town, you) online, and booked a twinshare at the Dunraven Arms. More expensive than I'd've like, sure, but after all it was on O'Reilly's dime.

Red hauled his stupidly-large suitcase inside while I chatted with the bored matron behind the desk, trying and mostly failing to win her over with my witty repartee.

Too late in the day, I decided. Not at all insulted at the lascivious grin that spread its way across her sallow cheeks when Red heaved himself up to the desk and collapsed sweatily along my side.

'In town for the contest?' she dimpled at Red, and if I were less of a professional, I would've thumped my head on the pitted oak.

'Ma-a-aybe,' Red let his eyes drift to half-mast and leaned across the metre separating them. 'You think I should enter?'

The Holder of My Key smirked, dangling the room key on one finger. 'You look the part, sure. But can you sing?'

There are times when it seems like the Universe has decided that being a raging bitch, while fun, is less amusing than setting everything in an easily-accessed pile for the shock value.

'I'm told I can carry a tune,' Red smirked, reaching out to snag the key and blowing her a kiss. 'With sufficient incentive.'

She damn well _giggled_ , and Red bounced his way up the stairs with a flirtatious glance shot over his shoulder. I glared after him for a moment, then I realised he'd left me with his damn bag.

I was going to _kill_ him.

*****

Mrs O'Reilly (Janice, Jan to her friends) was staying at the other end of the village in Fitzgerald's Woodlands House, so after we'd set our bags down in the admittedly charming room, Red and I rugged up for a cross-country outing. April's still pretty chilly, and we didn't know how long we'd be out.

It took an hour to cross two kilometres of golf course, ducking caddies and posh twits in plus-fours, and when we reached Fitzgerald's, we had to turn right back around, as Jan had apparently decided to spend the evening in the Dunraven Arms.

I could have strangled her, if it weren't for the whole low-profile issue.

'So,' Red purred to the bartender, leaning in to grin. 'Anything interesting going on in this town?'

The bartender, a bottle blonde with a chin piercing and a general air of disaffection turned a disinterested scowl his way and said 'Losers' Night, darling. You keen on the empty orchestra?'

'Huh?' I said, intelligently, but Red clearly knew what was going on.

'Not a fan, then?' he twitched his very best James Dean smile at her, and I had to spend a moment talking myself down. 'I _have_ been known to have a go, if the right inspiration's in the audience.'

As always, Red's charm melted the icy disdain along with my resolve. The blonde laughed, leaning against the pitted oak to put her wares on better display.

'This is actually the biggest karaoke competition in Limerick,' she murmured when Red leaned in, mirroring her pose. 'We get folks from all over coming in to compete. Sometimes even a record company or two turns up. Tonight and last night were just warm-ups. Real business happens tomorrow,' she flicked a glance at the little stage. 'At Fitzgerald's.'

'Interesting,' Red dragged the word out. 'Tell me _everything_.'

I groaned, and headed back to our room. One of us ought to be rested tomorrow, and it wasn't likely to be Red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea whether Eddie Rockets is good or bad food, but the advertisements looked the right sort of appalling 50s nostalgia for my purposes.  
> As far as I know, Adare has no link whatsoever with karaoke, but hey! Liberties being taken!


	3. Dame in an off-white mumu

We had an expensive but delicious breakfast in the hotel the next day; it was on expenses, so I stopped Red from ordering a second and third course, which earned me a devastating and smouldering pout but a painless victory. We parted ways at the restaurant door, with Red going to scout out the neighbourhood while I tried hacking Jan's laptop. 

The internet connexion was too spotty, though; the hotel's wifi dropping like the bass in a Skillrex song. After an hour, I gave up and dug a crappy paperback out of my bag. I’d learned years ago that sometimes you just had to sit back and wait for a break in a case. You had to accept the futility of beating your head against the wall and just… read a book or watch some cartoons to keep from wearing enough of a hole in the hotel carpet to get a bill in the post. Fifty pages into Francois's uncovering of the vicious Nazi plot, Red dropped onto my bed, startling me into falling off. 

'Hot,' he grinned, leaning back against my pillows and waggling his eyebrows. 'I can barely keep my trousers on, Fletch.' 

I glared up at him and made a show of settling on the carpet and refinding my place in the chapter. 

Red was silent for a strangely-tense moment, though that was probably just me and my undying unrequited crush projecting. I tensed all my muscles and breathed out slowly, turned a page even though I’d taken nothing in.

‘The lovely Mrs Suit spent the whole day playing really shitty golf,’ Red told the stucco’d ceiling in a drawling tone. ‘Met up with a gaggle of thoroughly female friends, nary a gentleman caller to be seen.’

I splayed the unread book over my chest and glared at a waterstain shaped like a melting Donald Duck. ‘That doesn’t mean there _isn’t_ a gentleman caller. _Or_ that her lover wasn’t one of the ladies lunching at tee.’

Red made an obscene noise and rolled over to waggle his eyebrows down at me. ‘Maybe this case will be entertaining after all, Fletch. And I take back everything I ever said about you being boring.’

I sat up and swung my book at Red, missing by a mile as he jerked back, and laughing as he overbalanced over the _other_ side of the bed. They really were quite difficult to stay on; maybe the hotel should look into less slippery bedding.

I wasn’t going to think about how Red and I were both on the floor after falling off the bed.

The bed was still between us, after all.

God damn it.

****

We didn’t get much done for the rest of the day, just a whole lot of sniping. Luckily, the karaoke contest was that night and Mrs O'Reilly would be heading home on Sunday afternoon. If she’d spent today playing golf and tonight singing off-key, that left only twelve hours for the booty call. She wouldn’t be able to go far, we’d get a few photos or a whole lot of nothing, then go home ourselves and break the news.

And I could spend the rest of Sunday night in an ice bath, hating myself for every single choice I’d ever made.

In a town the size of Adare, there’s usually only one or two things to do on a night, so when Red and I left to head towards Fitzgerald’s for the karaoke competition, we were accompanied by almost every other guest at the Arms.

We wandered through the aggressively-idyllic streets and caused a brief yet severe traffic jam at the door. The English queue, the Irish tend to mob. I’m fairly sure I saw one woman shove the poor bloke she was with face-first into the lintel, but in the end we all made our way inside and to the bar.

‘Mine’s a bitter,’ Red murmured right into my ear as I jostled into the three inches of bar available between a gothy hipster and a pig farmer. ‘I’m signing up and checking the list.’

I dug my fingernails into my palm and gave him a nod, scrambling for my self-control. I just had to get through an evening crammed into the corner while people mangled the greatest hits of the 90s, one more night in the hotel, then the drive home.

I could do that.

I ordered Red his pint of bitter and got myself a Guinness. Stout’s hard to drink quickly, so it let me take a bit of the edge off without risking getting soused. I was going to need a little buzz if I was going to keep from shaking to pieces with tension.

I turned to find the tables already crowding, even though the competition was still an hour away. Saturday evening clearly meant “pub time” for the whole town. I caught sight of Red lounging at a tiny table just behind a group of excited women, several of them turning every so often in hopes of Red inserting himself in their conversation. I felt my stomach clench; maybe I wouldn’t have to keep it together all night. If Red went back to one of their rooms, I’d be able to have my gibbering breakdown into a pillow a full day early.

‘Ta, mate,’ Red kicked a chair out for me, seemingly ignoring his admirers, and took his beer. ‘I think we’re in for the night. There were thirty names, and they do it by knockout rounds.’

‘Huh?’ I paused, licking the foam off my lip from my first sip of Guinness.

Red’s eyelids dropped a little, leaving only the faintest glimmer of his eyes visible. ‘Thirty people sing, the judges knock out the bottom ten. The remaining twenty sing again, bottom ten again. Then five. That’s sixty-five songs at three minutes, plus discussion and barney with judges. We’ll be lucky if they have a winner by midnight.’

‘Good thing we were planning on being up all night anyway, then,’ I shoved mine and Red’s beers to the edge of the table and unpacked my laptop. A little closer to the door, Mrs O'Reilly had her own laptop and a very serious expression on display. With any luck she had her bluetooth on, and I’d be able to search her system for clues.

‘Had we now?’ Red purred, rearranging his sprawl to knock his boot against my ankle. ‘That’s grand, that is.’

I felt my cheeks heat and bent over the keyboard to search for Mrs O'Reilly’s signal.

‘Huh,’ I turned to glance at the lady. ‘She takes this karaoke thing seriously, Red. She’s keeping scorecards for all the regulars, stats on judges’ preferences, there’s a whole training regimen in here too.’

Red slung his arm around the back of my chair and leaned over my shoulder to peer at the screen as Mrs O'Reilly shuffled between spreadsheet after spreadsheet. I breathed in for a four-count and out for six as Red left his hot, heavy arm pressed along my back and prayed for it to never end. Or for Red to leap up and take one of the ladies at the next table up on her offer. Prayed for something.

‘Huh,’ Red smirked and breathed out right against my neck. ‘Maybe she’s cheatin’ on her husband with the microphone.’

I swallowed and mechanically screenshotted a few spreadsheets for later. When she wasn’t looking, I’d try to copy the files, but I was with Red: Mrs O'Reilly seemed to be in town just for karaoke, strange as it sounded.

I picked my beer up again and took another sip as the MC climbed onto the stage.

‘All right, Adare!’ she grinned and the lights whirled around the bar over the fifty or so patrons in a room probably zoned for twenty. ‘Are you ready to _’ROKE?!_ ’


	4. The man who knew just about nothing

Five minutes into the event, I found myself wishing fervently I’d thought to bring ear plugs. It wasn’t so much the quality of the singing as it was the relentless volume. I’m not, it may surprise you to learn, the sort of guy to attend clubs and raves. I’m not even a frequent patron of pubs; I like to keep a bit of control and the ability to hear myself think.

Red, of course, was the opposite. Completely at ease in crowds, in his element as the centre of attention. He lounged beside me, finishing his bitter and foot tapping in time to the songs as they started. I tried my best to keep my attention on Mrs O’Reilly, but Red was very nearly pressed against my side, loose and inviting and impossible. I kept my expression blank and my hands on my keyboard and waited for Red or Mrs O’Reilly to get called up.

At least _that_ ought to offer some distraction.

Red got himself a refill while one of the skinny, gothy types belted out something that sounded like, but was not, Queen. I made myself take a few sips of my stout while he was gone and screenshotted Mrs O’Reilly’s updated spreadsheet, but she remained completely focussed on the stage and unapproached by any potential lovers.

‘All right, Fletch?’ Red slid back into his seat and slipped his arm around the back of mine again. He’d already drunk an inch of his second pint, I noticed.

‘I hope you’re up to driving back tomorrow,’ I said, trying not to lean back into him. ‘I think I’m gonna have a headache for a week after this.’

Red made a sort of purring noise and his free hand slid into my hair to ruffle it. I made an involuntary squeak as his blunt fingers stroked against my scalp and tried to imagine what crime I must have committed in a past life to incur this karmic load. It must’ve been a doozy.

‘You don’t have to stay,’ he knocked his shoulder against mine from behind, fingers trailing behind my ear and down to my neck. ‘I’ve got it under control. You could go search Jan’s hotel room to be thorough; I know you like that sneaky shite better than this.’

It was a temptation. I dropped one hand to my thigh and dug my fingers in to try and keep my focus on my job. The problem, though, with minor pain when you’re already horny is that it tends to rev you up rather than jolt you out. I cursed my lack of nails and tried pinching viciously.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I managed, though it was hoarse even to my own ears. ‘Besides, we don’t want to lose the table, do we?’

Red chuckled, but whatever he had been going to say was drowned out by his name being called. He drained half his pint and bounded up to take the microphone from the MC, leaving me trying to talk my erection down.

He struck a pose, radiating sex appeal, and launched into his song with perfect pitch and a devastating stage presence. I made myself look away when Red’s hips started shimmying, on the pretext of checking on our assignment.

Mrs O’Reilly was staring at the stage, a line between her eyebrows seeming to indicate something other than unbridled lust driving her interest. Her lips thinned and she bent over her computer again to type. I spared a glance for my screen, and found her adding a new column for Red, filled with bolded all-caps evaluations of the half-dozen fields she tracked for the competitors.

I felt a moment of irrational pride in her perfect scores and semi-coherent notes about his performance, then suddenly his song was over. There were a few minutes of wild applause, to which Red responded by shaking his hips again, twirling to present his buttocks, and throwing air kisses to his adoring fans. I watched him grin, drawn in like everyone else in the room by Red’s amazing star quality.

I didn’t have the time to wallow in my hopeless crush, though, because the MC was already shooing him back towards me to call the next contender up.

‘Well,’ I led with as Red dropped back into his seat and drained the second half of his beer to keep him from getting the first word in. ‘I think it’s going to have to be me following Mrs O’Reilly if we need to. She’s got your face burned into her brain with the force of about a thousand hateful suns.’

‘Aye-aye?’ Red grinned his crooked grin at me, faintly shiny with sweat after his turn under the spotlights. ‘Well it’s not every day you get confronted with a talent like me.’

I made a show of rolling my eyes and hunched over my stout as Red leapt up to hit the bar again. Two songs later, Mrs O’Reilly was called. I bent over the keyboard to hack as much data as I could from her laptop; left open out of the careless attitude to security that most of the population seemed to share. It was a huge boon to my work; this widespread belief that newer was more secure than older tech. Paper was much harder to access secretly than a wireless, cloud-based hard drive; you had to sneak physically into a space, search by _hand_... Part of me always wanted to _shake_ people, but that’d be shaking myself into a much harder job.

‘She’s good,’ Red said, dropping back into his chair with an unexpected pint glass of water instead of bitter. ‘No wonder she’s taking it so seriously.’

I looked up from copying her hard drive and blinked a few times while my ears rebooted. Red was right; Mrs O’Reilly’s voice was sweet even over the tinny backing music. I didn’t think she was as mesmerising as Red, but that could easily be because of my natural bias, not any objective judgement.

‘Very nice,’ I said as she wound down. ‘But I guess this means we’re all here to the end?’

Red knocked his knee into mine and settled his arm across my chair yet again. ‘Are you complimenting my performance, there, Fletch? My _blushes_.’

I managed to shoot him an irritated glance. ‘You know you killed it. _And_ you know I couldn’t tell if a tune was being carried in a broken bucket from some child’s seaside holiday, so _I_ know _you_ know there’s no point in asking my opinion on the matter.’

Red just laughed and settled in his chair to watch the contestants file up.

Red and Mrs O’Reilly breezed through to the final ten, though that took until half-ten to get decided. I spent the time nursing my stout and footling around my copy of Mrs O’Reilly’s system, looking for increasingly-unlikely signs of anything adulterous. Red spent it alternating between bitter and water, and fielding interested ladies’ flirtations. I made myself ignore the mess and concentrated on admiring Mrs O’Reilly’s budget file. It was comprehensive, balanced, and utterly free of suspicious items.

By the time Red was called up to have some sort of sudden-death sing-off against Mrs O’Reilly, he’d collected nine invitations back to ladies’ rooms and I’d determined Mrs O’Reilly was definitely not cheating on her husband. I powered my laptop down as Red belted some hair metal ballad and stretched. Hunching over a laptop might be how I spend ninety per cent of my time, but no matter how much you train yourself it’s still brutal.

I paid little attention as the final decision was being made; too intent on stretching like some middle aged banker and too disinterested in the results to make myself listen. The room around me erupted in applause, and Red reappeared at my side as Mrs O’Reilly piped up again.

‘Better luck next time,’ I told Red, hoping to god that if he kept this nonsense up he wouldn’t expect me to attend the competitions. ‘She’s definitely sold as seen; her book keeping’s religious and everything ties back to the singing.’

‘Grand,’ Red smiled a slow, wide grin. ‘Did you want to follow the lady home for thoroughness, or can we turn in?’

I shifted and one of the muscles in my neck sent a stiffly-worded letter to my pain receptors. ‘I think we’re fine to clock off. Mr O’Reilly didn’t seem the type to demand observation after the fact.’

‘Well then,’ Red stood slowly, making an entirely unnecessary production of getting up, all languid stretches and peeks of skin as his shirt rode up. ‘I’m ready for bed. How ‘bout you, Fletch?’

I opened and closed my fist a few times against my thigh, then I packed my laptop away. ‘Sure thing. You coming back to the room first?’

Red’s eyebrows shot together like the Romeo and Juliet of the caterpillar world, freshly loosed from their families’ supervision. ‘Uh, yeah?’

I nodded, running my tongue over my teeth. He’d been singing and shaking his hips all night. Whoever he’d picked as his companion of the night would doubtless appreciate his rinsing the sweat off. Maybe shaving again to make sure his face was soft and smooth…

‘Come on, Fletch,’ Red’s hand closed around my wrist and he tugged me to my feet. ‘Back to the hotel before the slathering hordes notice I’m unchaperoned.’

I gave my best irritated noise, gathered my things and followed him out into the biting night air.

‘Balls!’ I said, almost dropping my laptop bag as all my limbs tried to retreat back inside my torso. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Did the Sun die?!’

Red chuckled and slung an arm around my shoulders. Ordinarily I’d’ve shoved him away, but he was about a thousand degrees warmer than the air, so I just shoved my fingers in my armpits and started towards our hotel. Red kept pace easily, swagger only mildly quashed by the pace I set.

He stayed close as we clomped up the stairs to our blissfully-toasty room, obviously too chilled to care about the image we were presenting to all zero people watching. I set my laptop bag down on the table and hunched over the radiator, hands out like some waif out of Dickens.

‘You take first shower,’ I muttered, wincing as the blood rushed back into my fingers. ‘I’m just going to defrost like my Ma’s chicken.’

‘If your Ma _ever_ defrosted chicken on the radiator, Fletch,’ Red said, grinning and already schucking his clothes, leaving a trail of denim and leather from the door to his bag. ‘I will eat Roddy’s socks. And I think she’d make _you_ eat them for maligning her like that.’

Roddy’s socks were quite probably more virulently toxic than sludgy puddles in Chernobyl; the boy had never graduated from the pre-teen idea of personal hygiene and seemed to wear them for weeks at a time, through hurling games and long shifts for his plumbing apprenticeship. I was half convinced if he ever took his shoes all the way off we’d have a Western Front Trenches situation on our hands.

‘Go freshen up, Red,’ I said, rubbing my warming hands together before pressing them to my icy cheeks. ‘And don’t use all the hot water.’

Red made an unintelligible noise, but didn’t say anything. I kept my back to him as he rustled in his bag and padded over to the bathroom, too cowardly to watch him planning his next conquest.

I listened as the water started up and made myself not picture him standing under the spray. Instead I started composing the final report to Mr O’Reilly in my head.

Red would head off to his assignation, I’d take a lonely shower, jerk off and go to sleep.

Just like normal. I sighed, toed my shoes off and collapsed on my bed, trying not to listen to the shower or the ticking of my watch.

No problems at all.


	5. The PI Always Bones Twice

The shower shut off, jolting me out of my wallowing, and the door opened to let a cloud of sweetly-herbal steam into the room. Red’s usual on-the-pull body wash, I noted. It always made me want to bury my nose in his neck. I heard his footsteps coming closer, stopping in the space between our beds.

 

I blinked and turned my head on my pillow to find Red smirking down at me, towel low around his hips. There were a smattering of water drops clinging to his chest like tiny, lucky women. I made an involuntary noise high in my throat and practically levitated off the covers to flee to the bathroom before he could say anything.

 

Ten minutes under the spray mostly spent trying not to smack my head into the tiles later, I emerged clean and a little more under control. I gave myself a stern glare in the mirror, toweled off and went back into the room to find Red lounging on _my_ bed, staring at the TV with a very obvious tent in his lap. He hadn’t even put boxers on, I thought despairingly. Still just the towel. My tombstone was going to read “death by horny aneurysm, what a loser”.

 

I opened my mouth to yell at him for using client money for pay-per-pussy, but when I glanced at the screen, it was black.

 

‘Normally you’re much cleverer than this, Fletch,’ Red said, rolling his head on my pillow to stare at me, and I had a wild moment of despair at how it smelled like him now and I was going to have to sleep without it if I didn’t want to start humping the mattress in my sleep. ‘Normally you can put the clues together on your own, but clearly that isn’t gonna happen this time.’

 

‘Buh?’ I said, because I am quick-witted and always ready with a _bon mot_.

 

Red sighed, but his expression was fond, rather than irritated. He rolled to his feet and padded over to me, stopping inches away. ‘Fletch.’

 

I felt my eyes freeze in the Widest Possible setting, the cogs of my brain apparently jammed too hard to turn at all. ‘Red?’

 

‘This,’ Red’s smirk warmed into a smile as his hands settled on my hips and he leaned in, breath ghosting over my lips. ‘Is a pass. I am making a pass at you. Do you need it clearer?’

 

Somehow my brain rebooted enough to access my sarcasm routines, and I managed to raise an eyebrow at him. ‘Can I buy a vowel?’

 

Red laughed and pressed his lips to mine.

 

I said already about narrative conventions running up hard against reality. You’re probably expecting me to talk about how the kiss was earth-shakingly disappointing rather than the culmination of over a decade’s confused crushing. How I’d maybe built the idea up in my head so high reality was always going to be disappointing.

 

It’d be just typical, after all, if this thing I’ve been dreaming of for years turned out to be the opposite of a romance novel.

 

Turns out sometimes the universe throws narrative convention (and nerdy private detectives) a bone. Everything about the kiss seared its way into my hindbrain as the Ubersnog; the slick heat of Red’s tongue, the smell of him, the press of his hands over my hips. I groaned and grabbed for whatever part of Red I could reach, stumbling forward as he pulled me towards the bed. I felt him grin into the kiss and felt a delighted laugh bubbling up through my chest as we crashed on top of the comforter. Legs and towels slipped and tangled as Red rolled on top of me to pull back and smile down at me, hands braced either side of my head.

 

‘Really?’ I said, breathless and already sliding my hands along the muscles of his back. ‘Not that this is unclear, but I just wanna make sure I’m not having a stroke or something and hallucinating everything.’

 

‘You are such hard work sometimes,’ Red said, leaning down to kiss me again. ‘How would I prove you aren’t hallucinating, you complete lunatic?’

 

I made a considering noise, but lost my train of thought as Red’s lips trailed down over my neck.

 

Now, I could tell you the next thing that happened, but I’m a little shy about it. All the classics fade to black at about this point, so let’s leave it at: it was confusing and everything happened a whole lot all at once and we had such a good time of it we had a couple more goes before passing out.

 

****

 

The next morning I woke up with Red snoring against my neck and a profound sense of delirious happiness that had me pinching myself several very vicious times out of the worried sense that nothing ever went this right for me.

 

‘Stop it,’ Red rumbled, one hand clumsily slapping my pinching hand away from doing its duty. ‘Jesus, I didn’t think you were this Catholic. If you wanna be spanked, I’m sure we can discuss that, but save it ‘til after I’ve had a cup of tea, please.’

 

I choked on my own breath, blushing furiously as Red cackled and rolled off me and headed into the bathroom. I stared up at the ceiling, grinning like a demented Cheshire tomcat who’d just managed to win over the lady cat he’d been chasing for ages, then I dragged the pillow over my face to muffle my excited screams.

 

‘No fair,’ Red said, dropping back onto the bed hard enough to bounce us both. ‘Screaming in bed without me.’

 

I threw the pillow to one side and grabbed him by the back of the neck to pull him down.

 

We had to scramble to make check-out after that.

 

****

 

Mr O’Reilly was confused but pleased to receive our final report the following morning, shaking us both by the hand. Then he went off with a plan to ask his wife on a date night to karaoke in hopes she’d confide her great and baffling passion in him and the two of them could embark on some sort of secretless future.

 

I had my doubts; people need a part of their life to themselves, but I wished him the best. Perhaps it’d work out. He presumably knew his wife better than we did.

 

As for Red and me, well. Let’s just say we spent even more time in each other’s company, bickered even more than before and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves making up afterwards.

 

Life might not follow narrative conventions, but sometimes it works out better than you’d ever expect.


End file.
